Unbundling Polarization

Canen, Nathan; Kendall, Chad

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3253592

Cited by 5 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate." party discipline also plays a role in the progressive separation between partisan camps (Sinclair, 2014;Stonecash, 2018;Canen et al, 2020). How much pressure do the leaders of the U.S. parties of today exercise on their rank-and-file, by influencing member behavior and pulling them away from the middle ground (Snyder and Groseclose, 2000;Forgette, 2004)?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous work, Canen et al (2020) leverage detailed internal party records for identification, showing that party discipline is an important component of political polarization in the decade between 1977 and 1986. 3 Because these detailed internal records are only available for the House of Representatives for that specific decade, however, this identification strategy does not generalize.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…the Civil Rights era), our approach incorporates multiple policy dimensions. This extension turns out to be non-trivial from the perspective of identification relative to the one-dimensional approach of Canen et al (2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…legislators (Levitt, 1996;Heckman and Snyder, 1997;McCarty et al, 2001;Clinton et al, 2004), the exclusion of lopsided legislative bills from party discipline (Snyder and Groseclose, 2000), and the use of detailed internal party records (Evans, 2018;Canen et al, 2020). We provide more detailed comparisons to extant methodologies in Section 2.5.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Political Parties as Drivers of U.S. Polarization: 1927-2018

Canen¹,

Kendall²

2020

Self Cite

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The current polarization of elites in the U.S., particularly in Congress, is frequently ascribed to the emergence of cohorts of ideologically extreme legislators replacing moderate ones. Politicians, however, do not operate as isolated agents, driven solely by their preferences. They act within organized parties, whose leaders exert control over the rank-and-file, directing support for and against policies. This paper shows that the omission of party discipline as a driver of political polarization is consequential for our understanding of this phenomenon. We present a multi-dimensional voting model and identification strategy designed to decouple the ideological preferences of lawmakers from the control exerted by their party leadership. Applying this structural framework to the U.S. Congress between 1927-2018, we find that the influence of leaders over their rank-and-file has been a growing driver of polarization in voting, particularly since the 1970s. In 2018, party discipline accounts for around 65% of the polarization in roll call voting. Our findings qualify the interpretation of -and in two important cases subvert -a number of empirical claims in the literature that measures polarization with models that lack a formal role for parties.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Political Parties as Drivers of U.S. Polarization: 1927-2018

Canen¹,

Kendall²

2020

Self Cite

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“…Rather, candidates of the favored party square off in primary elections, where the only relevant constituency are party members and the incentive is to adopt a more extreme position so as to appeal to that base (Mann, 2006). The explanation citing declining party discipline (Canen et al, 2020) suggests that the declining ability of party leaders to control their members has effectively limited scope for compromise. In contrast, the other commonly cited factor, namely the proliferation of specialised cable news channels and Internet-based publications, which create an echo effect, reinforcing more extreme preconceived positions (Prior, 2007), is common to the United States and other countries, and therefore cannot obviously explain the unusually sharp rise in polarization here.…”

Section: The African Exceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individualism, Polarization and Recovery from the COVID-19 Crisis

Eichengreen

2020

Intereconomics

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Political polarization, meaning sharp differences in the political ideologies and preferences of the partisans of different parties, implies that members of one party are more likely to dismiss the policies and recommendations of spokesmen and appointees of the other party on the grounds that those policies and recommendations are informed by value systems inimical to their own. In the US, this means that when spokesmen for one party endorse masks, members of the other party reject them instinctively and automatically.

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Tariffs, agricultural subsidies, and the 2020 US presidential election

Choi

Lim

2022

American J Agri Economics

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This paper provides evidence on the effects of US and Chinese trade policies on the 2020 US presidential election. In response to a series of US tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, China imposed retaliatory tariffs, especially on US agricultural products, which largely affected Republican-leaning counties. The US government then subsidized US farmers by providing direct payments through the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) to mitigate the Chinese retaliatory tariffs. Using the universe of actual county-level MFP disbursement data, we first document that US agricultural subsidies relative to the Chinese retaliatory tariff exposure were especially higher in solidly Republican counties, implying that Trump allocated rents in exchange for political patronage. Then, we find that US agricultural subsidies outweighed Chinese retaliatory tariffs and led to an increase in the Republican vote share in the 2020 presidential election. Finally, we uncover evidence that China's retaliatory trade policy and US agricultural policy exacerbated political polarization in the US, especially the rural-urban divide.

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Unbundling Polarization

Cited by 5 publications

References 33 publications

Political Parties as Drivers of U.S. Polarization: 1927-2018

Political Parties as Drivers of U.S. Polarization: 1927-2018

Individualism, Polarization and Recovery from the COVID-19 Crisis

Tariffs, agricultural subsidies, and the 2020 US presidential election

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